


Inertia

by flibbertygigget



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Bones helps Sarek deal with Amanda's death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Post-Star Trek (2009), which I am still not over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-08-21 23:02:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8263621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flibbertygigget/pseuds/flibbertygigget
Summary: Bones helps Sarek deal with the aftermath.





	

Sarek stared into the vastness of space. Before, he would have been able to logically deduce which of the thousands of stars and planets was Vulcan, which held his species and his family, but no more. The space where Vulcan once had been was dark and blank, such a small effect for the event that had destroyed his universe.

Sarek closed his eyes. It wasn’t logical, when his planet was gone and his species near extinction, for him to mourn his wife more than the others. To act as though the loss of one life outweighed the others was dangerously emotional. Naturally emotional, Amanda would have countered, and Sarek could feel the ghost of her warm humor in the gaping hole where their bond ought to have been. He envied her that certainty, that openness that would have allowed her to grieve openly had he been the one who had not escaped. It was a selfish, emotional thought, but he would have vastly preferred it if she had lived and he had not.

“I’m beginning to think that the whole Vulcan stoicism thing is horseshit.” If he had been human, Sarek would have jumped. As it was, he simply turned, raising an eyebrow at the human that had caught him so emotionally compromised.

“Doctor McCoy,” Sarek said. “I apologize if my lapse has-“ McCoy waved him aside, offering him one of the tumblers of dark alcohol that he was holding. “You do know that Vulcans cannot become intoxicated.”

“Well, I for one need a drink,” McCoy said, “and there’s nothing more depressing than drinking alone.” Sarek’s eyebrow quirked higher, but he took the drink.

“Thank you, Doctor,” he said.

“I would’ve thought thanks were illogical, given that it won’t do you much good.”

“A great many things are illogical, Doctor,” said Sarek, sipping the drink. “However, my wife taught me that it is better to bow to human decorum under such circumstances.” McCoy nodded, and then he glanced at Sarek, hesitating.

“You wanna talk about it?” he said. Sarek didn’t answer. “I, uh, I was married at one point. Me and Jocelyn, we fought like cats and dogs, it was a disaster, but- Well, the one good thing that came out of that mess was Joanna.” He took another deep gulp. Sarek stared at his own drink, waiting for McCoy to continue. “I used to call her JoJo. Jocelyn hated that, hated it even more when JoJo’s first word was ‘daddy.’ Sometimes I’d take her down to the clinic with me, let her play with the Band-Aids and tongue depressors and my stethoscope. One time she started crying because she couldn’t hear her dolly’s heartbeat.”

“Where is she now?” McCoy sighed.

“Gone,” he said. “Jocelyn got custody after our clusterfuck of a divorce. I could’ve tried to do something, figure out visitation, but,” he gestured at the glass in his hand, “I’m not really the most stable of individuals. Besides, it wouldn’t have been fair to JoJo, dragging things out even further.” He paused for a moment, staring out into the stars. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, not crying the last time I saw her.” Sarek nodded, understanding.

“I grieve with thee.” McCoy snorted.

“Damn it, man, she’s not dead.” The expanse of dead, dark space where Vulcan had been stretched between them. “I don’t know why I told you all that, bothering you with my messes. You’ve got enough on your shoulders.” Sarek looked at McCoy, who was fiddling with the ice at the bottom of his glass.

“Amanda never truly adapted to Vulcan,” he said softly, slowly, as if he spoke too much he would shatter his memories like his planet. “She was too emotional to be accepted by our society and too perceptive to not realize it. I promised her that I would attempt to obtain an assignment to Terra so that she could be among her own kind again. It… pains me to think that, had I pursued that goal more quickly, she might have survived. It is illogical, of course. I had no way of knowing that…” Sarek blinked. His eyes were prickling, swimming, and no matter how hard he tried he could not suppress those emotions.

“It’s natural,” McCoy said. “Even if you couldn’t have known, even if you figure that logically it isn’t your fault, there’s always that part of you that’s stuck. The trick is getting it unstuck.” Sarek closed his eyes.

“I do not believe that I wish to,” he said. He did not anticipate McCoy’s hand on his shoulder, but it was not unwelcome.

“That’s natural, too,” he said. “It’s okay to give yourself time to mourn, you know. I won’t tell anyone. Mourn and then… be happy, or whatever Vulcans are when they’re not upset.”

“Content?” McCoy snapped his fingers.

“Exactly!” he said. “I won’t try to say that your wife’s in a better place or whatever, because Lord knows I don’t know what we find after death, but I do know that she would have wanted you to be content.” He gave Sarek another pat on his shoulder, and then he left the room. Sarek looked back out into space.

“Content,” he mused. He imagined Amanda’s atoms, scattered across the expanse of space where his planet had once been. Because of the principle of inertia and the lack of atmosphere in space, they would no doubt spread across the galaxy, perhaps the universe, only slowing down in increments over thousands of years. There was poetry in that, no doubt, poetry that Amanda would have been able to better conceive than him. “I will strive to become so, t’hy’la.”


End file.
